From the series: Proof of Purchase
Mixed media with found packaging, thread, hardware, and resin
22 x 28 inches
2026
Description:
Shelf Stable examines preservation, labor, and racial hierarchy within consumer culture. The portrait depicts a Black woman rendered in workwear reminiscent of domestic service, positioned within a composition built from discarded food packaging and household materials. Her expression is tense, unsettled, suspended between endurance and alarm.
In this work, the subject’s eyes have been exchanged with those of a Caucasian woman from the companion piece Display Only. The substitution is deliberate. By transplanting vision across racialized bodies, the work interrogates who is granted neutrality, who is positioned as default, and who must labor under imposed visibility.
The eye exchange destabilizes perception itself. Vision becomes transactional; transferable, commodified, reassigned.
Encased in resin, the surface suggests preservation and containment. Like processed goods designed for indefinite shelf life, the body is presented as inventory; stored, categorized, and maintained within systems that standardize experience while disguising inequality.
Where Display Only carries a tranquil detachment, the calm of occupying the societal default. Shelf Stable embodies the tension of awareness. The difference between the two works lies not only in race, but in the psychological weight of inhabiting or resisting imposed roles.
The portrait asks:
What is preserved?
Who is preserved?
And at what cost?
From the series: Proof of Purchase
Mixed media with found packaging, thread, hardware, and resin
22 x 28 inches
2026
Description:
Shelf Stable examines preservation, labor, and racial hierarchy within consumer culture. The portrait depicts a Black woman rendered in workwear reminiscent of domestic service, positioned within a composition built from discarded food packaging and household materials. Her expression is tense, unsettled, suspended between endurance and alarm.
In this work, the subject’s eyes have been exchanged with those of a Caucasian woman from the companion piece Display Only. The substitution is deliberate. By transplanting vision across racialized bodies, the work interrogates who is granted neutrality, who is positioned as default, and who must labor under imposed visibility.
The eye exchange destabilizes perception itself. Vision becomes transactional; transferable, commodified, reassigned.
Encased in resin, the surface suggests preservation and containment. Like processed goods designed for indefinite shelf life, the body is presented as inventory; stored, categorized, and maintained within systems that standardize experience while disguising inequality.
Where Display Only carries a tranquil detachment, the calm of occupying the societal default. Shelf Stable embodies the tension of awareness. The difference between the two works lies not only in race, but in the psychological weight of inhabiting or resisting imposed roles.
The portrait asks:
What is preserved?
Who is preserved?
And at what cost?
